Walton College Students Take Three First Places in Global Investment Portfolio Competition

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Portfolio Management Class students from the Sam M. Walton College of Business won three first-place awards at the Global Asset Management Education Forum in New York on March 30-31, 2023.

U of A Portfolio Management Class students from the Sam M. Walton College of Business won an unprecedented three first-place awards for risk-adjusted performance of three different student-managed investment funds at the world's largest student-managed investment fund competition at the Global Asset Management Education Forum, or GAME XII, in New York on March 30-31. 

The students took first place in three of six categories:

• Undergraduate Growth, based on the performance of the $2,500,000 Rebsamen Trust;
• Undergraduate Core, based on the $6.75 million U of A Foundation account that students manage; and
• Undergraduate Small Cap Fund, based on the $125,000 David Carter Adams Energy Fund.

Each first-place winning team will receive $1,000 from the forum. 

More than 1,100 students from 120 universities and colleges attended the GAME XII Forum. It includes panels with globally recognized speakers as well as the largest annual student-managed investment fund competition in the world. Keynote speakers include executives from Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, TIAA, Wells Fargo, Rockefeller Global Family Office, Bank of America, T. Rowe Price, Barclays, Bloomberg, Financial Times, CMT Association and Cambridge Associates.

Walton College sent a team of 22 finance students, including 16 from the Portfolio Management class, three from the Fixed Income class and three graduate students from the Shollmier M.B.A./M.Acc. Fund/Energy Finance class to participate. Craig Rennie, associate professor of finance, teaches these classes. Sergio Santamaria, finance instructor and senior research associate at Garrison Financial Institute, led the group while in New York.

Joseph Kelly from the Portfolio Management class participated in the Outlook for Markets and Investments Panel as student panelist. Moderated by Peter Spiegel, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times, the panel included Jimmy Chang, CFA, chief investment officer of the Rockefeller Global Family Office; David Kelly, CFA, chief global strategist of J.P. Morgan Asset Management; Celia Dallas, chief investment strategist of Cambridge Associates; and Darren Wolf, CFA, global head of Investments of Aberdeen.

Although previous Walton College teams have won such awards in the past — including GAME III Graduate Hybrid Funds, GAME IV Graduate Value Funds, GAME VII Graduate Value Funds, GAME VIII Graduate Growth Funds, GAME IX Graduate Value as well as Graduate Growth Funds and GAME XI Undergraduate Growth Funds — this is the first time any team won three different awards for three funds simultaneously in the world's premier student-managed investment competition.

The full list of participants include:

• Steven Austin, Brett Bennett, Grant Blanchette, Alivia Brewer, William Cherry, Samuel Chesshir, Andrew Guerra, Humza Hashmi, Zachary Hassan, Joseph Kelly, Nathaniel Kleypas, Daniel Kuehl, Miguel Marin, Juan Miranda Zegarra, Trung Phan, Christian Schick and Kaushik Sivakumar from the Portfolio Management class;
• Dylan Ham, Sydni Marino and Luke Millman from the Fixed Income class; and
• Nicholas Lorenzoni, Harrison Schick and Alexis Walker from the Shollmier M.B.A./M.Acc. Fund class.